


Reflect Perfectly Back

by Michelle_A_Emerlind



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Bartender Daryl, Bottom Daryl, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Rick Realizes He's Gay, Spoiler for 06x10, Top Rick, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 09:06:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6111676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/pseuds/Michelle_A_Emerlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick goes to a regular bar every afternoon to complain about his women woes. Daryl lets him know the reason why he has such trouble with women.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflect Perfectly Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Adry1412](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adry1412/gifts), [serenalunera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenalunera/gifts).



> For my bottom Daryl girls! I hope you like! Also mild spoiler alert and this also helps me work through some frustrations I'm having right now with good old Richard. Nothing is meant to be bashing in here. I love all the characters and I hope it doesn't come off as harsh to any of them!

From the outside, the bar looks decrepit and old--a hole in the wall with sweating bricks and dusty, unwelcoming windows. It’s why Rick chose it in the first place. He figured it’d never be a place that Shane or the rest of the boys would go to look for him and at this juncture in his life, well, Rick needs some goddamn privacy. A little time to think. Not that thinking has helped him as of yet.

There are two other good things about the bar, though, other than its shitty outside appearance. For one, the inside of the bar is actually pretty clean. It’s not chic or modern by any sense of the word, but the glasses are sparkling and the wood is new. And the other thing that’s good about being right here, right now, is that there’s a regular bartender exactly at noon when the bar opens. And he’s quite inclined to listen to Rick bitch up one side and down the other whenever he wants.

Quite in fact, to make the point, sometimes Rick is _already_ bitching even before the door has been opened. He’s sure that there’s been once or twice--hell, maybe even five times, now that he’s thinking of it--that he and Daryl have arrived right on cue, noon exact, and walked to the door together. Rick begins and Daryl grunts in his rather encouraging way while he slides the key in, lets Rick walk in first, and begins to set up chairs to the tune of Rick’s monotony.

Of course, Rick’s grumblings are never about what he _needs_ them to be about, never the heart of the issue. But he can’t quite find it in himself to talk about it just yet. Even to Shane, who badgers him nonstop that he needs to just let it out. But Rick is so tired of letting it out and, being honest, tired of the constant reminders that this is the third heartbreak in Rick’s string of woman troubles. No, going there hasn’t helped him before and Rick’s pretty sure all it’s going to do now is send him into hysterics. So the better thing to do, as always, is order a Jack and Coke and tell Daryl about how the lawnmower’s on the fritz again.

Because _Daryl_ never pushes him. _Daryl_ never judges, his sweet bartender who supplies Rick with alcohol right away on this particular fine afternoon, without even bothering to ask him his order. No, instead of all that bullshit, it’s clean and quick. Daryl grabs a glass, flips it up, fills and mixes, and sits it down with a thunk in front of him, just as Rick’s ass hits the seat.

“Know me too well,” Rick tells him with a grin as he lifts his drink and toasts to Daryl. Daryl smiles at him like he usually does, a little motion that’s barely more than an up-tick of the left side of his mouth and a certain shine to his eye.

“Sure,” he grunts and grabs a red cloth, starts wiping down the bar from where the closing guys missed a whole foot of a spot. “Jack and Coke everyday but Sunday. Sunday’s tequila.” Daryl grunts with an eyebrow raise. “Must fuckin’ hate Sundays.”

Rick laughs and sips at his drunk. “Yeah. Sundays can kiss my ass. Lori used to--” Rick cuts himself off and goes again. “You know what’s shitty about Sundays? Mowing. I tell you what, this damn lawnmower I got is fucked _again_.”

Daryl chuckles at him as he keeps cleaning, his strokes moving him back toward Rick. He stops when he’s even with him across the bar and chews on the inside of his lip for a minute before saying, “Lawnmowers suck. Girls do, too. I mean, if you wanna talk about it. Kind of what bartending is for, right? Hearts and shit.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rick clips and glares at the Jack in his hand. “I come to a bar in the afternoon so that no one’s around _to_ talk about it.”

“Fair enough,” Daryl tells him with a shrug. “I ain’t got a horse in that race. Just offerin’. Given that you won’t shut up about any of them three girls you’ve dated.”

“I haven’t said a--”

“ _Yesterday_ ,” Daryl cuts him off, “was all about Michonne’s braids. Think the day before that was how your hair looks shitty now that you’re not with Jessie anymore.”

Rick scoffs. He does not talk about them. Except, okay, maybe the once with Michonne. And he guesses Daryl’s right about the Jessie thing. And there was that time that he started poking at the jukebox and singing off-key romance songs, replacing three names in the lyrics. But that’s it. That’s all. He can most certainly shut up about them and he most certainly _doesn’t_ spend everyday going on and on about the difference in their eye color...shit. Fuck.

Rick lets his head hit the bar, which splashes his drink up and onto the counter. Daryl grunts unhappily at him and pokes Rick’s arm to the side so that he can wipe the drink away before it sticks. “Why am I so shitty at love?” Rick mutters to the polished wood smashed into his nose.

Daryl makes a sound that’s half between a bark of laughter and a snort of amusement. “Don’t want the answer to that question, man.”

“There’s not an answer,” Rick whines. “I’m been looking and I can’t find one.”

“Always an answer. And I can guarantee you it ain’t named Jack. Least not liquid Jack.”

Rick frowns and that’s enough to cause him to pull his head back and study Daryl, who’s moved onto polishing glasses like it’s his calling in life. “What?” Rick says, intelligently.

“Tell me ‘bout these women,” Daryl says. “Not their hair or their eyes or their jobs. Tell me about how you felt about those women.”

“I loved them--”

“Bullshit,” Daryl cuts him off and arcs his eyebrow up so high that Rick would be a damned fool to try and fight it.

So he sighs. “You’re right. I didn’t.” He stares at the liquid in his drink again and takes a swallow, lets it burn courage down into his gut. “First, was Lori. Right outta high school. I thought we were in love. But...well, I guess I just thought that we _had_ to be in love. That what I was feeling for her _must_ have been love. I mean, it wasn’t. I was a horny teenager, right? Just pretending and lying to myself the whole way. And we were friends, too. I cared for her, sure. Didn’t want her hurt. Wanted her to be happy. And I guess back then when I was younger, I thought that that was all love was. And then Carl came along, and I _did_ love her. As the mother of my son. But I never really loved her as her, you know? And I couldn’t explain to her why I didn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I didn’t understand it myself. And then it all went to shit in a handbasket. Jessie was next. She was great. Always smart and optimistic, adaptable after her last husband and I thought I loved her for that. And when it became obvious that I didn’t, she left me. Then I found Michonne, with the pretty braids. She was the most stubborn woman I’ve ever known, but god, how powerful she was. Independent and strong and didn’t take shit from any man, especially me. I trusted her, you know? Respected her, too. And I tried so hard to love her. I tried so hard to love all of them. But I didn’t. I don’t. And I don’t know why. I think I’m just broken. They try to give me so much and I feel like glass. I reflect it all back, but it’s just a lie. The path of least resistance, you know? It’s easiest to go with the flow when they want to start a relationship, when they want to go deeper, when they want to strike an emotional chord. And it works for awhile. I have a good poker face. Until it doesn’t.”

Daryl stares at him for a second and then slowly sits the glass he was working on back under the bar. He leans over, his arms crossed and his biceps flexing until he’s so close to Rick, Rick would call it intimate in any other circumstance. “First chick I dated,” Daryl starts, “was named Rashida. Daddy didn’t like her skin. But she and I, hell, we were inseparable. Friends turned something else. We dated for two years and when I was sixteen, she finally wanted to do it and I was all hell yeah, you know? I didn’t want to be a virgin anymore. My brother Merle wouldn’t shut up about it and I liked Rashida so much. But I couldn’t get it up. Couldn’t fucking get my dick up. I thought for awhile it was because I was like my daddy--didn’t like her skin. Even though that was stupid. I mean, I didn’t care. But I thought it was like genetics or something. Could only get it up for a while girl. So I dated a white girl. Rose. Was a waitress going through college and we had such a good time. Took her home. Couldn’t do it. Then there was Amy, Lisa, Consuela, Olivia, Traci...I’ll stop there and spare you. Point of the matter is, I had a pretty uninterested dick.” He smiles at Rick, curving his lip up again. “Then instead of a Amy or a Rose or a Rashida, I met a Jeff. And he was cool, too. And we got along real well. And I took him home. And fuck, man, we banged like rabbits all fucking night long. Straight up till my cock was tired.”

Rick laughs, chuckles softly at Daryl who is smiling right back, but even as he does so, the hair on the back of his neck pricks at the thought that this bartender, who he has become so close to, is _gay_ and his heart pounds faster--in fear or excitement, Rick doesn’t know. But he brushes off those feelings and says with a grin to his face, “Don’t think sex and love are the same thing, man.”

Daryl’s smile grows wide. “For me, they are. Couldn’t fuck someone until I loved them. Didn’t love any of those girls. But loved Jeff. God, from the second I saw him, almost. Only then could I properly fuck someone.”

“And so what’s your point?” Rick asks, going for serious, but unable to keep the happiness off his face. “That I need to love these girls _first_.”

“Nah, man,” Daryl says with a slow little wink. “Think maybe you need to bark up another tree.”

Rick blinks. Surely that wasn’t...a come on? From his bartender. The one that gives him beautiful Jack and Cokes and doesn’t judge, but looks at him sometimes from under those short eyelashes that just accentuate the way his irises look like a storm over mountains. Surely not. _Surely_ not. But he’s looking at him that way now. And he’s biting his lip. And he’s so close--damn, why didn’t Rick tell him to back up off of this bar that is way too small for the space of Daryl’s biceps, their heads, and the dwindling amount of straightness that Rick is feeling seeping away from him in waves? “Can’t fuck you till you love me,” Rick says and instantly gets a spike of fear that rattles up and down his bones straight to his ribcage and settles in his heart to thud so hard that it nearly drowns out the sound of Daryl’s response.

“You been comin’ here everyday for weeks now. And every Jack and Coke makes me a little more attached.”

“To me?” Rick squeaks and tells himself to back away, trip over the stool if he has to, but to definitely not, _not_ , to definitely not do what he’s _actually_ doing, which is leaning in just a little further, so close that Daryl, with a simple stretch of his neck, is whispering in Rick’s ear.

“Think I’d like you to fuck me now. Then you can see how you feel about a Daryl instead of a Michonne.”

Rick swallows hard and the glass he’s been clinging to suddenly has no more power left over him. He shoves it away, lets it slide down the bar and then, with a dry mouth and all the courage left in his shaking soul, says, “Here?”

Daryl chuckles. “Here.” He grins as he pulls away and walks to the door. “Owner told me about three weeks ago to move openin’ back to three cause we don’t got shit for customers. I still do noon for you, though.” He throws a wink over his shoulder and locks the front door, turns the open sign to closed.

Rick fidgets nervously, but manages to get his ass off of the stool and turns around to brace himself against the bar. Daryl grins and slides up to him nice and easy, pressing their chests together. Rick feels a bubbling sensation caught somewhere between his heart and his dick, and his head, miraculously, dings in with a a thought that clarifies the whole situation--even before they’ve barely touched, he already hasn’t felt _anything_ like this before, electricity swimming in the air like water snakes.

Daryl smiles and his hand slides on Rick’s skin to the back of his neck. “Got plenty of lube around here. Want to fuck me on the bar floor?”

Rick groans and nods, taking a hand and carefully sliding it around Daryl’s waist, exploring the feeling of hard muscles underneath his fingertips. And that just seems to click it into place for him--this is a guy. A _man_. And Rick’s thinking of fucking him, thinking of his dick being balls deep in his bartender’s ass, thinking of the grunts Daryl makes in conversation and how his sex grunts will sound, thinking of pushing his tongue deep inside Daryl’s mouth and claiming him and---

\--and Rick realizes he’s doing just that. That he’s turned Daryl around and pushed him into the bar, that he’s covered him, chest to chest and thighs to thighs and that his lips are on Daryl’s, his tongue is in Daryl, and he’s making all kinds of wanton noise that he should be ashamed about, but is instead just _proud_ that he still has the capacity to make.

Daryl moans around Rick’s onslaught and sinks his body low so that he can buck up into Rick and still be braced by the bar. And, fuck, does Rick like that. Like the feel of Daryl hot against him, hard in his jeans--a man, _hell yeah_ , he’s a man.

And Rick’s a man, too. Only human. And he can only take so much of this grinding before he’s desperate for skin on skin, for the slide of flesh together, for Daryl under him saying his name like some kind of mantra. So Rick gets _bold_ , bolder, he feels like, than he’s ever been with any of the women. He slams his body into Daryl’s, arches him into the bar and comes at him hard with teeth and tongue and rough, calloused fingers popping buttons away, pushing inside to grab ahold of Daryl--hot and hard and ready.

Daryl moans into his mouth, opens himself up and rocks his way what feels like straight into Rick’s skin, Daryl’s entire essence vibrating on some kind of frequency that Rick’s body responds to like his lungs respond to air.

Rick pushes away from the bar, one hand firmly around Daryl, tugging him with him, and the other still wrapped around his cock in his jeans. Daryl follows along, panting, and Rick twists and maneuvers and they slide to the floor without much grace, but with a lot of grunting and touching. And then Rick is over him, scratching Daryl’s clothes aside and tugging at it like it personally offends him on a level deeper than sin.

Daryl gets with the program, too, pulling off his shirt and kicking away his pants, getting bare ass naked for Rick right here on the floor of the goddamn bar and before Daryl shoves away the rest of his clothes, he digs in his pants pocket quickly for a bottle and a packet and presses them into Rick’s hands with a simple puff of whisper, “I’ve been hoping.”

Rick doesn’t need any more encouragement than that. He’s never done this before--god, he _hasn’t_ , even though he’s _desperate_ for it now, whining in the back of his throat like he’s a man dying of thirst and Daryl’s an oasis--but he knows what to do. He’ll admit now that there’s been once or twice, in the dead of night, that he’s taken his computer into the wild, dark side and _watched_. Studied, you could even say. So he knows what he’s doing. But goddamn, he’s glad he’s waited for this one.

He opens the bottle and pours and then wastes no time sliding a finger inside Daryl and listening with all his attention to the groan that turns into a sinful kind of rattling vibration coming up from Daryl’s chest. And Rick has to reward him for that, has to show him how much he likes it. So he puts his mouth on Daryl’s chest in open kisses, wet and dirty and rough with the scrape of his teeth.

Daryl responds in kind, hitching his hips up just as one hand goes into Rick’s curls, the other grabbing at his back, digging nails in hard and scraping. “Come on, man,” Daryl tells him with a sex-roughed voice and eyes even heavier with the drip of ecstasy. “Fucking fuck me.”

Rick laughs, but it’s near breathless as he slides up Daryl’s chest to kiss him, hard and without remorse. He slides a second finger in as he does so, catches the moan low in Daryl’s throat and pulls it into his mouth, drinks him in like he’ll die without him--because the taste of Daryl here on the floor, the feel of him already even before they’ve gotten to the actual fucking, is better than _any_ Jack and Coke, higher and wilder than any tequila.

But Daryl is pushing at him now and saying, “I’m ready, goddammit,” and so Rick takes pity on him, leans up and tears open the condom, slides it on with shaking hands that are far more desperate and far more wanton that anytime he ever took Lori or Jessie or Michonne.

And then Rick is over him again and Daryl is lifting his hips, wrapping his legs around Rick like puzzle pieces snapping in and Rick groans as he positions himself. He meets Daryl’s eyes--so dark blue now they’re melting with the pupils, blown out and fierce--as he pushes in, the head slipping inside and groans from both of them dragged from their lips.

Daryl grabs the back of his neck and tugs him down so their mouths can crash together again and Rick stutters out a breath as he presses forward, feels the hot heat of Daryl take him as he fits inside until all there is in the moment is the feel of Daryl’s tongue tangled in his own and the feel of Rick’s cock snug as it bottoms out to a wet and sinful groan from Daryl’s chest.

“Come on, baby,” Daryl mutters against his lips, kissing him between words. “Fuck me like you never fucked _any_ of those girls. Take me like you feel like you’ll die if you don’t.”

“I will,” Rick answers him and, in the moment, it’s the cold, hard truth. He’ll explode if he doesn’t have Daryl, burst and decay without the feel of him around him.

So Rick starts moving, slow at first, but powerful. Nearly all the way out and then all the way in. And Daryl grips him, with his hands and his legs, but also the squeeze of his muscles as he holds Rick inside. And then it gets rougher, harder.

It starts with Daryl’s teeth in his shoulder, scraping down and pulling out a delicious pinprick of thrill as Rick’s skin responds to the onslaught. And then Daryl’s nails starts scraping at his back, encouraging him. And with each of those little scratches, little indents in Rick’s skin, Rick’s pace goes faster, harder, until he’s slamming into Daryl, thrusting into him hard and with abandon, dragging more than just groans--beautiful _screams_ , now--from Daryl’s mouth, which just encourages Rick to fuck him down onto the bar floor, to slide him and pull back nearly all the way before pushing inside with all the power in his hips, diving into Daryl and demanding entrance to his body which Daryl is giving willingly, meeting Rick with the twitching of his hips, the angle of his legs.

Rick slides a hand between them, grabs Daryl again and grins at how hard and leaking he is, at how Daryl loves the thrill of this just as much as Rick does. Rick begins to stroke him and as he does, those beautiful screams increase. Rick keeps the rhythm of his hand up with the rhythm of his cock that is pounding, now, inside of Daryl, and Rick puts his own mouth on Daryl’s neck, bites down and gets a warm flash in his belly at the way Daryl arches toward him in a loud, animalistic moan.

“You’re so goddamn hot,” Rick tells him.

“Yeah. Am I--,” Daryl cuts himself off and groans at a powerful thrust from Rick that pushes him down into the floor. “Am I,” he gasps, “hotter than they were? Your girls?”

Rick takes the hand not on Daryl’s cock and tangles it in his hair, pulls lightly and puts his mouth right up against Daryl’s ear. “You’re the hottest thing I’ve ever fucked,” he growls as Daryl arches up into him. His body starts to go rigid and Rick can tell by his gasping, panting breath and by the way his nails are taking claim to Rick’s skin that he’s so close, that he’s holding himself back and it’s brilliant and it’s beautiful and it’s hot and it’s powerful and it’s everything that Rick’s been looking for, everything that he’s been wanting. And so he growls in Daryl’s ear again, “Come for me. Come on me and then, if you do, I’ll fuck you _harder_ and come in _you_ and then you can have me. I’ll never go back to one of those girls ever again.”

“Rick,” Daryl moans out, broken by the stuttering of his hips and the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he holds himself off for just one more second. But Rick won’t allow that. So he angles himself and slams forward, twists his wrist in the perfect kind of way that drags on Daryl’s cock deliciously and then watches as the man beneath him cries out, bucks his body upward and then is spilling on their naked skin, releasing himself right there in the middle of the bar and Rick gasps in satisfaction, looking between them in glee to see the streaks left on his stomach and chest and that does cause, just like Rick said it would, his hips to thrust faster, to slam forward, to take Daryl like Daryl is his to take, because isn’t he? Didn’t he offer himself and didn’t Rick step up to the plate and isn’t this the beginning of something? The beginning of a wild current of water sweeping Rick off his feet and under, as deep and hot and wild and blue as Daryl’s eyes that have been staring at him for weeks like this and _fuck_ , if Rick knew, he would have taken him the _first day_ , because Daryl is perfect and hot and tight and his and Rick claims him. Finishes him. Comes with a final hard slam home and Daryl rattles out one last groan in his chest at it, squeezes his legs and his muscles to keep Rick inside as Rick pants out his release until he collapses, spent, on top of Daryl in pure ecstasy.

They lay there for long moments, Rick having no sense of time. But eventually, Daryl grunts, and pushes lightly at him. Rick murmurs and pulls out, rolls off to the side and onto his back beside Daryl, staring up at the popcorn white ceiling.

“Could pick me up after my shift,” Daryl says, eventually, when the stutter of their hearts has return to something like normal. “Take me home.”

Rick grunts, but doesn’t answer at first, his mind slowly taking in the slope of the ceiling to the wood walls, the curve of wood to the tile on the floor.

“Unless you’re thinking a Michonne is better,” Daryl tells him. “Unless you want a Lori or a Jessie.”

Rick closes his eyes and lets the bar surroundings burn in his mind. He thinks of the glass Daryl was cleaning earlier, clear and reflective, cold and without substance. And he thinks of the wood, now, too. Heavy and solid, deep like the pools of Daryl’s eyes. And he wonders which one he is, what he used to be and what he is now, what he will be. And his heart grows faster, thumps in his chest with fear, but just as he feels he might truly only be a reflection, he feels the sturdy presence of Daryl’s fingers slide into his and squeeze and there is a thrumming heavy inside of him, deep and loud like a drum and Rick opens his mouth and finds that where his whole life, his words have been clouds and smoke, now they are truth. Real and finite and concrete and hopeful.

“No,” he says, his voice thick and without tremor, “I’ve been waiting for a Daryl.”


End file.
